Star's Crossing

7: Meant to be Broken

"Wait," Mare protested, "I want to hear-"

"I said no, Mare." Her mother stared at her plate, eyes wide and cold. "No to speaking of it, no to attempting it, no. It is utter frivolity to devote time to this affliction rather than your future."

Mare's heart dipped in her chest, shot down like a hawk in hunt. "But it is my future."

"Your future is Star's Crossing," said Mare's mother. "Your future is this family. You know your father-"

"Harriet, please, she is just a child-"

"Do you know where your sister is, Mare?" Her mother folded her hands in her lap, glaring at Mare from beneath lowered brows.

Mare shook her head. Matilde was sixteen then, and all of Mare's older sisters had married and left the home.

"She's gone to call at the Edwards'. Just as she did last week, and the week before."

Mare blinked between her parents, failing to grasp her mother's point.

"She's courting, Mare."

Mare opened her mouth in surprise. "But she's only sixteen, and the season hasn't begun!"

"Well, Antony is older. He will return in summer to court, and simply because Matilde is not in his class does not mean she is not a viable-no, the best-option. While he's away, she is at his parents' table, proving her merit."

Mare's heart raced. She realized she'd closed her hands into fists beneath the table, her cotton gown clutched for dear life. Matilde was closest to Mare in age, only four years older. How could she have accomplished so much in so little time?

Was Mare truly expected to do the same?

"In a way," said her father quietly, "your mother is right, Mare. You must learn survival before happiness; both cannot be achieved any other way. Write, my love. By all means, write. But-"

"But you will never live by your pen," said Mare's mother. Her expression had relaxed, settled, but her voice was sharp and livid as a blade off a whetstone. "You will live by your husband. I'd thought you too young to be made aware of the circumstances, but as you've devoted so much thought to your future, perhaps it is time."

Mare's father stared at his plate. He said nothing.

Mare did not reply either. But her mind drifted as her mother spoke of mines and money, or marriage and courting, of a woman's place and the price of freedom. She thought of Lizzie Bennett and Jane Eyre, of three girls gathered around a candle, sharing ink pots and dreaming up entire worlds, composing humans of flesh and bone with quill and parchment.

Stories were resilient. Stories survived before they thrived.

Mare could survive. Mare would survive.

She straightened in her chair and listened as her mother spoke. She commanded her face to form a mask with a lacquered smile that would divert unwanted eyes, and began building a careful wall around her heart. She would survive her mother, Star's Crossing, courtship, marriage; and one day, one day, she would write.

The following day, after Mare had trudged to the schoolhouse by the woods, her teacher Ms. Cressida, Star's Crossing's kindest, most affable spinster, pulled her into the store room.

"Ms. Atwood," she said, unwinding Mare's scarf and dusting snow from the wrinkles. "I've received the most mysterious letter."

Mare blinked up at Ms. Cressida, whose small brown eyes gleamed like jewels, lustered with joy. She was a short, stout woman with tight curls and small hands, and always spoke with her chin bowed and her eyes narrowed, as though she had a most wonderful secret to effuse.